CVE-2012-4461 Denial of service in n/a

What is CVE-2012-4461?

CVE-2012-4461 is a low-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 22 Jan 2013. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The KVM subsystem in the Linux kernel before 3.6.9, when running on hosts that use qemu userspace without XSAVE, allows local users to cause a denial of service (kernel OOPS) by using the KVM_SET_SREGS ioctl to set the X86_CR4_OSXSAVE bit in the guest cr4 register, then calling the KVM_RUN ioctl.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2012-4461?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2012-4461?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2012-4461 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2012-4461 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2012-4461, GHSA-vmj3-p7xv-c3c3.